


Circles and Sabers

by seasalticecream32



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Interrogation scene, Multi, Poe and Rey are survivors, sexual assault parallel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:51:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasalticecream32/pseuds/seasalticecream32
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey learns about soul mates, and she has hope that somewhere out in the universe is someone who won't abandon her. Her marks, a circle and a red saber, are a gift and a curse.</p><p>Her soul mates don't turn out like she imagined they would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circles and Sabers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vonPeeps (BoodleBrown)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=vonPeeps+%28BoodleBrown%29).



> Hey all! This is serving a dual purpose. I wanted to write some JediStormPilot and also work through the interrogation scene in a way that was healthy to me. So here's my take on that.
> 
> If you want to send me prompts or talk to me about JediStormPilot (but please for the love of everything good, do not come talk to me about Reylo please) then my tumblr is captainmerlin32.

 

Rey had a red saber and a circle on her wrist and she wasn't sure why or when they showed up, but she was certain they meant something. Sometimes, when she was still little and still wondering about the world, she would imagine that her people left them on her as a sign that she was the right little girl abandoned on hell. They would come pick her up and rub their fingers over the raised lines carved out against her wrist, and they would know they had found her.

Then she met the other humans, sitting around and scrubbing their scrap. They had matching marks, each one a spear in dark and simple lines on their bronzed skin. She hadn't asked, but they'd seen her staring.

_Found each other at fifteen. Haven't been apart since. There's a real bond in soul mates. Unbreakable. I can't imagine my life without her._

She'd shivered at the idea of unbreakable ties, something that couldn't be washed away or forgotten. Even though she tried to ignore it, something like hope grew in her chest.

Somewhere out there, there was someone who would be hers, down to their soul, and they would want her.

_Maybe two someones…_

Rey found BB-8, circles upon circles, and her heart jumped. This droid belonged to someone… She took care of it, and it told her about its master. About how kind he was, how he'd looked after it. Rey's heart fluttered, just a bit, when the droid said its master would return.

She bit back the question on her tongue, the bubble of betrayal she always buried down.

_How do you know he'll come back? Maybe they never do. Maybe we're just junk abandoned on this junk planet._

But BB-8 never noticed her awkward, torn silence. It just continued beeping and whirring and sliding along beside her.

When it hollered at her, screaming about its master's jacket, she'd thought, for a fleeting moment, that she was going to meet him. Then the droid screamed THIEF and all her hopes came crashing down.

The boy in the brown jacket had been watching her, and she wondered if he'd meant to steal from her too. She chased him down, knocked him over.

“What's your hurry thief?” Her staff pushed against the man's chest, pinned him down, and he didn't seem to understand her accusation. “The jacket. This droid says you stole it!”

“I've had a pretty messed up day alright!” He jerked away from BB-8. “So I'd appreciate it if you stopped accusing me of--”

“Where'd you get it? It belongs to his master.” Rey glared, expecting excuses. She didn't have time or the patience for...

Then she saw it.

The circle, a black line raised against warm-brown skin.

She didn't dare to hope. Hope could trap her, haunt her, fill her with regret at the drop of a pin. She'd learned to be wary of hope a long time ago. But she didn't deny the sudden thumping in her heart. She barely heard his fumbling excuses and apologies as she pulled him up.

She didn't rip his sleeve back, but she wanted to.

Then he grabbed her hand, their marks close and prickling up her arm. She was trying to keep from getting blasted out of the sand and all she could feel was the zap of recognition up her arm. If Finn noticed, he didn't even say anything.

But when he grabbed her hand again, without thinking, the same hand, she was certain he felt it. She could see it in the sudden tightness to his shoulders, the way he looked back at her with wide eyes.

“I know how to run without you holding my hand!” She'd yelled, afraid she'd lose track of her fast-beating heart and would fall over in the middle of the run for their lives if he kept holding on to her.

Then he fell, knocked out by a blast, for just a few seconds. She'd scrambled up, ready to keep going but…

“Are you ok?”

The question stopped her, and she turned towards him. She took his hand, felt the buzzing of their marks beneath her skin. “Yeah. Follow me.”

And suddenly the buzzing, zapping feel of his hand in hers wasn't a distraction, but a reassurance.

They'd get through this if she had to fight through hell to do it, because she had questions.

All it took was a daydream of a day spent on a ship, fighting off space-monsters, and meeting her idol--the best and most famous scavenger in the universe--and she was certain this was everything she'd ever wanted. He was part of the resistance. He was brave and kind and when he looked at her, she could feel the circle on her arm twinge in curiosity.

He was it.

This was it.

She'd found her place and her people. They'd go back to Jakku, and she'd wait, but she'd never be alone again.

The thought thrilled her almost as much as Han offering her a job. Almost as much as seeing green that spanned an entire planet, like emerald jewels crusted under the blue-gold sky.

Then Maz, kind and perceptive as she was, ruined everything.

The saber, the fear, the worry. Rey could never stop running from that abandonment, she could never let go of the hope that sustained her since she was a child running after a ship that was never coming back.

And Finn left. Her soulmate, the man with the mark, left her alone. Even on this planet made of jewels, even with the honey-sweet fruit and the water sparkling in every cup, and the offer to run away into the stars, she couldn't feel anything but the hole in her chest.

Left behind again, by someone who was supposed to be there forever, someone drawn to her and yet.

Alone.

She ran. She dashed through green and the humid air, over roots and dirt slippery with wet. She ran until she couldn't see the dingy shop with it's too-knowing leader and the proof of all she'd never have.

She couldn't have prepared. BB-8 had run off for help. She was the hero she'd always imagined would come to save her.

She was taken.

Fear hammered in her heart, something pushing in on her, slowing her down even as her blood sped its way through her veins with all the force of a speeding train. She couldn't move, she wouldn't scream. The bloodred saber was close to her face and she couldn't deny it was the same one. Jagged edges, a strange t shape. She wanted to struggle, but she couldn't.

He touched her face and there was no pleasant prickling. It was like being set on fire, like being burned alive. The smoke choked her lungs, the pain gripped her tight, and she could hear him through the burning.

“The map. You've seen it.”

More sounds, more noises, but he didn't move his hand from her cheek.

Her world went black and she saw nothing but a red saber burning in her vision, like a damning brand against her eyes.

She woke to him staring at her, and her blood drained from her all at once. She didn't see the lightsaber. But there was the mask, and she knew now. That saber and the mask went hand in hand, each of them fractured and imperfect and terrifying. And they burned her and pained her and this was her future, this was the mark on her arm. A light and a dark. She thought, for a fleeting moment, that she should have run away with Finn. But he'd abandoned her, too.

She wanted to scrub the marks from her wrist until it bled and there was nothing left to show they'd ever been connected. Any of them.

“You still want to kill me.” He said it like he was surprised, and she was aware all at once that he'd seen the mark. She wondered how, covered as she was. Then she remembered the pain, the fire in her memories. She remembered it burning through her mind like pages in a book.

“That happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask.”

He took off his mask, and he looked like a boy. Like someone who once cried, who once broke at the edges, like someone who once laughed, a long time ago. And she was more terrified for it.

“You know, I can take whatever I want.” The way he said it, she knew he means to tell her he could take her. He could take all of her.

She will hear those words in her nightmares for a long time.

Then he touched her, and everything was all wrong. It wasn't the buzz-zap feel of something between them. The touch was like ice racing through her, curling around her belly, sliding through her thoughts, slowing down the images that flashed through her head so he could study them. And it hurt. It hurt bad enough that tears trickled down her cheeks, but she couldn't stop them.

She pushed back. Slow, painful. More painful than sitting still, more painful than screaming. More painful than burning. But she pushed anyway, until he realized that he wasn't seeing what he wanted to any more, that he wasn't strolling leisurely through her thoughts.

“You're so lonely… so afraid to leave.”

She shuddered, knowing too well that he was baiting her. Reminding her. She wanted to spit, wanted to fight.

He took until he couldn't, and then he left her sagging against her restraints.

Even after fighting him off, he was a dirty slime inside her mind, covering her from the inside out, burning her mark and reminding her she was bound forever to this monster. This beast who'd attacked her. It made her want to vomit, made her want to bathe for days in water that would boil the touch of him out of her.

When she saw Finn again, his face bright and excited to see her, she hugged him and felt the slime-gross rebel inside her. She couldn't touch- she couldn't have- she was not the Rey she was before.

And Finn couldn't even tell. He didn't know.

When he ran with her, hand in hers, triumph in the glint of his eye and the buzz-zap energy between them, Finn couldn't tell anything had changed in her at all.

She held on to hope again. Held onto hope that he came back for her, that he cared enough to risk everything and return. She held to the hope that he wouldn't leave when he felt the scarred up mess Kylo left inside her.

Later, after the rescue and the loss and the death and almost death of so many of the Resistance, Rey curled in on herself and cried. The tears were fat and ugly and if anyone was around to hear, she would've been horrified.

But no one was there.

Nothing felt like a victory any more.

Finn was hurt.

His buzz-zap love was gone, muted, waiting in a med-bed and silent.

All she was left with was the slime-gross burning, the slow-sick ice of Kylo's touch.

When she came back to camp, a man stood by Finn. He held Finn's hand, his lips thin and white, and his eyes wide. Leia and the others were gone, getting ready for the next steps and all the big changes on the horizon.

She wiped the snot from her nose and hid the tremble of her hands. “He'll wake up. I have faith in him.”

“I do, too. You know, he brought BB-8 back, just like he said he would. Finn's a fighter.” The man's voice was warm, thick. He tapped his fingers against Finn's hand like he was unsure what to do with it. “He saved me from Kylo Ren.”

He said the last part quiet enough that she almost didn't hear.

But she did, and she finally got a good look at the man. Dark haired, dark eyed. His skin was sallow and his eyes had black-blue smudges under them. She wondered how long he'd been not sleeping. He looked at her and frowned, leaving lines of worry all across his forehead.

“You got that look. Did Finn rescue you, too?” He asked a different question than the one he voiced. He rubbed at his arm.

She shook her head, tucked her wrist behind her. She could still feel the red mark fresh on her skin. “No. I saved myself.”

“Stronger than me.” The man closed his eyes and leaned forward.

“You're not weak,” she snapped. The words weren't meant to be harsh, weren't meant to come across as a scold. “It's not weakness to need someone. I've needed someone my entire life.”

He only looked at her with mild curiosity and held out his hand. “Poe Dameron, best pilot in the resistance.”

“Do you always open with that line?” She tried for levity, but her voice caught in her throat. She grabbed his hand, squeezed tight. Jumped when a spark, a gentle warmth spread in her fingertips. “Rey.”

“Just Rey?” He wasn't looking at her face. His eyes were glued to their palms, where their skin met.

“Yes. Is that a problem?” Her voice shook.

“You have it.” Poe didn't bother bantering. He pulled back his orange jumpsuit sleeve, a red gash cutting across his wrist in the blue glow of the med room. “You have it, too. I'm so sorry.”

She didn't answer, didn't pull back her bandages to reveal the mark she still felt on her wrist. Her eyes focused, and she realized (though she had known, from the moment the spark flew between them) it wasn't a cut on his arm. It's the saber, too red, too jagged. Just like hers.

And beside it, a circle.

“Finn too,” was all she could manage.

“Yeah. Finn, too.” Poe pulled her in. The hug was crushing. It warmed her all over, and it's fire all over again.

But it's different too.

This fire didn't burn her. It didn't break her or scream inside her. It brushed against all the slime-gross and slow-sick burn that Kylo left behind and it pushed it back.

“You… He did to you...” Her thoughts raced too fast for her mouth.

“I couldn't fight it.” Poe's voice broke, and she returned his embrace. It made the warm spreading in them brighter, bolder. She felt the drop of cold tears against her hair and buried her face into his chest. “I screamed, but there was nothing to...”

She didn't know how long they stood like that, holding each other, mumbling half-confessions in their flurry of fear and brokenness.

They were survivors. The both of them.

She had fought, and he hadn't, but they'd both survived.

When Rey left, kissing Finn on the head, she looked at the marks on her arm. She looked at the marks on his.

A circle, a saber.

She knew he'd survived, too.

They'd all be together, eventually.

They were stronger together.

And at least now, she wouldn't have to suffer the slime-gross, slow-sick-burn alone.

 


End file.
